246 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



Lord Armstrong's hydroelectric machine and its suggested 

 relation to the lightning that accompanies volcanic eruptions, 

 the reported new gas discovered by Lord Rayleigh and 

 Professor Ramsay in association with atmospheric nitrogen, 1 

 the manufacture of aluminium, the preparation of pure 

 fluorine, the synthesis of diamonds, and the fractionation 

 of yttrium. 



1895. Feb. I4th, 429^1 meeting. Professor Frankland 

 gave the results of a three years' investigation of the bacterial 

 life in Thames water. He found the number contained in a 

 cubic centimetre to vary between 630 and 56,630, the 

 largest number, as a rule, being found in winter with a low 

 temperature, and the smallest in summer with a high one. 

 The causes affecting the development of microbic life had 

 all received attention, and he exhibited curves illustrating 

 its relation to each of them. He inferred from them (i) that 

 though a few coincidences existed between low temperature 

 and a high number of bacteria, some other conditions, as a 

 rule, entirely masked the effect of the latter ; (2) the amount 

 of sunlight during the past three days has no substantial 

 effect on the number of microbes present in a cubic centi- 

 metre of water ; (3) this depends on the rate of flow of the 

 water, or, in other words, on the rainfall. 



March I4th, 43oth meeting. Sir H. Roscoe dwelt on the 

 recent great development by the Institute of Preventive 

 Medicine in the preparation of antitoxins. Within the last 

 few days about 400 doses of the antitoxin of tetanus had been 

 distributed to the Pacific Islands at a cost of one shilling 

 each. The preparation of diphtheritic antitoxin now took 

 only eighteen hours, and 300 doses of it were sold daily by 

 Messrs. Allen and Hanbury at a cost price of eighteen pence 

 for thirty cubic centimetres, or three average doses. The 

 effect had been to reduce by one-half the deaths from that 

 disease. 



April 24th, 43ist meeting (48th anniversary). Mr. 



1 They announced the discovery of argon (as they called the gas) at 

 the Oxford meeting of the British Association. See British Association 

 Xeport, 1894, page 614. 



